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Four MacArthur Fellows. One Event.

Rehumanizing Labor: Putting People Back at the Center of Work

Thursday, Oct. 15
5–7 p.m.
Probasco Auditorium, University of Cincinnati

Four recipients of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship will come together at the University of Cincinnati for Genius Lives Here: Rehumanizing Labor: Putting People Back at the Center of Work, an interdisciplinary conversation exploring how inequality, technology and social change are reshaping work and public life.

What happens when four MacArthur Fellows — whose work spans history, technology, labor, race, gender, democracy and human rights — come together around one question: How do we put people back at the center of work?

Presented by the University of Cincinnati College of Arts & Sciences, with support from the Action Collaborative, the event will bring together scholars whose work offers multiple disciplinary lenses through which to examine one of today’s most pressing challenges.

Why This Conversation Matters

Drawing on historical, anthropological and technological perspectives, the speakers will explore connections among labor, technology, democracy and human rights in the United States, South Asia and around the world. At the center of the conversation is a question with growing relevance as technology rapidly changes how and where people work: What does it mean to put people back at the center of work?

About the Event

The University of Cincinnati College of Arts & Sciences is convening this conversation as part of Genius Lives Here, bringing exceptional scholars together around major societal questions. The discussion will examine how inequality, technology and social change are reshaping work and public life, while highlighting the importance of interdisciplinary inquiry in addressing contemporary challenges.

Genius Lives Here

Shailaja Paik

Shailaja Paik

Dr. Shailaja D. Paik is Professor of History and Affiliate in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Asian Studies. She is the first MacArthur "Genius" Fellow from the University of Cincinnati. Her research, writing, and teaching interests lie at the intersection of a number of fields: Modern South Asia; Dalit studies; women's, gender, and sexuality studies; social and political movements; oral history; human rights and humanitarianism. As a historian, Dr. Paik specializes in the social, intellectual, and cultural history of Modern India. Her first book Dalit Women's Education in Modern India: Double Discrimination (Routledge, 2014 ) examines the nexus between caste, class, gender, and state pedagogical practices among Dalit ("Untouchable") women in urban India. Her second book The Vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality, and Humanity in Modern India (Stanford University Press, 2022  analyzes the politics of caste, class, gender, sexuality, and popular culture in modern Maharashtra.  

Nicki Dell

Nicola Dell

Nicki Dell is an associate professor at Cornell Tech. Her research focuses on understanding how computing technologies can facilitate harm or inequity and building systems, frameworks and interventions that make our technology-mediated world safer and more equitable for everyone. She carries out her research in sustained partnership with affected communities to deepen her understanding of the challenges they face and to devise new approaches that respond to both technological and social factors at play. At Cornell Tech, Dell co-founded and co-directs the Clinic to End Tech Abuse, co-leads Cornell’s Initiative on Home Care Work, and was the 2023 Siegel Faculty Impact Fellow. Her work has been recognized with a MacArthur Fellowship (2024), the SIGCHI Societal Impact Award (2023), the Advocate of New York City Award (2019), and an NSF CAREER Award (2018), among other honors.

Mary L. Gray

Mary Gray

Mary L. Gray, PhD, is founder and principal investigator of The Resolve Institute and a faculty member in the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, with appointments in anthropology and gender studies, at Indiana University. A 2020 MacArthur Fellow, Gray’s research explores the intersections of technology, labor and human rights, examining how communities influence and respond to emerging technologies and the future of work.

Jennifer L. Morgan

Jennifer Morgan

Jennifer L. Morgan is Silver Professor of History in the Department of Social & Cultural Analysis and the Department of History at New York University. A historian of race, gender, slavery and the early Atlantic world, she was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2024 and was the 2024–25 Andrew R. Mellon Fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. Morgan is the author of Reckoning with Slavery: Gender, Kinship and Capitalism in the Early Black Atlantic and Laboring Women: Gender and Reproduction in the Making of New World Slavery. Her current research examines slavery and freedom in the seventeenth-century Atlantic world, the emergence of private life under slavery, and reproductive racial capitalism and the afterlife of slavery.

Registration

Register today to reserve your seat. Space will be limited to the maximum capacity of Probasco Auditorium. The event also will be livestreamed, and those interested in the virtual option are encouraged to check back closer to the event for additional details.

Presented By

Presented by the University of Cincinnati College of Arts & Sciences, with support from the Action Collaborative. Funding for the event provided by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.